1.4 million jobless Canadians don’t qualify for the CERB or EI, analysis finds

TORONTO, ON- MARCH 24 - Restaurants in Toronto continue to offer takeout only. Scenes around the city as the City of Toronto declares a state of emergency to try to slow down the spread of COVID-19 in Toronto. March 24, 2020. Steve Russell/Toronto Star

About 1.4 million jobless Canadians in the third week of April are not receiving the new federal emergency benefit or employment insurance, according to a new analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Senior economist David Macdonald estimates 16 per cent of all unemployed Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic are without such aid, largely because they do not meet eligibility requirements for EI or the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).

Out of that, an estimated 549,000 Canadians who lost employment before March 15 don’t qualify for EI, primarily because they haven’t worked in the last two years or didn’t work enough hours to be eligible.

Another 466,000 jobless are ineligible for the $2,000-a-month CERB because they did not meet the requirement of making $5,000 in income in the last 12 months or in 2019.

As well, the analysis estimates 232,000 Canadians can’t get the CERB because they quit their job recently instead of being laid off, including those leaving work because they do not feel safe.

Macdonald also assumes 165,000 jobless Canadians, based on previous analysis of benefit take-up patterns, don’t receive the CERB because they face application difficulties.

Macdonald told iPolitics that while the CERB program has clear strengths, there are still gaps in eligibility that should be filled.

“On one side you see that the CERB is a decent program — it was designed rapidly, it moves money rapidly, it’s much more modern than the old EI system,” he said.

“However, there are restrictions that were put in place early on, some of which have been changed but some of the big ones remain. As a result, there’s a lot of people don’t have work and don’t have income support.”

While the total number of jobless without support increased compared to a similar analysis by Macdonald last month, a smaller percentage of all unemployed workers now are without access.

His March analysis estimated almost a third of jobless Canadians — 895,000 in total — had no access to either streams of federal income support. (Macdonald has since revised up his previous figure of 862,000 to reflect new labour data that indicates higher unemployment).

While unemployment likely increased from March, Ottawa has since extended CERB eligibility to seasonal and unemployed workers who have exhausted their EI regular benefits since Jan. 1.

At Ottawa’s request, some provincial governments have also agreed to not claw back social assistance payments for those no longer working and collecting the CERB.

As well, Canadians earning less than $1,000 a month are now eligible.

Federal data indicates that Ottawa has received 6.82 million unique applicants for the CERB since mid-March.

Macdonald’s analysis also estimates more than 900,000 Canadians earning less than $1,000 a month will now have access to the benefit. However, an estimated 199,000 Canadians currently making less than $1,000 a month won’t get the CERB because of the $5,000 income threshold.

He said there are as many as 1.4 million Canadians making between $1,000 and $2,000 a month who are now incentivized to try to cut their hours to become eligible for the benefit.

“In a regular world, you wouldn’t design a wall like that, where if you make $1,000 you get a $2,000 top up, and if you make $1,001 you get nothing,” Macdonald said. “But I suspect what happened is that expediency trumped good policy.”

However, Macdonald said the CERB’s success will make it difficult for Canadians to return to the traditional EI system, which offers less, requires more and puts Canadians into a complicated application process.